1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an integrated services platform for a telephone communication system, which handles a plurality of information services, including a voice mail message service and a facsimile processing service, and more particularly, to such a platform which provides a tightly coupled distributed architecture that allows substantially increased efficiency of equipment utilization, increased subscriber capability, modular expansion capability and low access blockage for subscribers and non-subscribers.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are available a number of telephone communication systems for offering a single type of information service to users. For example, copending U.S. application Ser. No. 393,270, filed Aug. 10, 1989 by Jones et al. discloses a voice mail message system having multiple voice processing units which are used to process a high volume of calls, so as to provide a high quality voice mail messaging service to a large number of subscribers.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,918,722 to Duehren et al. discloses a method for sending a facsimile message from a first location to a remote location accessible from the first location via the public switched telephone system.
While there are a number of existing communication systems which are capable of providing a single type of information service, there is a need for a telephone communication system which is capable of integrating a plurality of different types of information services on a single platform and which is also capable of adding new types of information services as they become available. In particular, there is a need for a telephone communication system which is capable of providing both a voice mail message service and a facsimile processing service which are integrated on a single platform.